R. Lander wrote:
> This is for people who claim there's plenty of wilderness left for Jeep
> tracks. They have no broad perspective on land use. Trees alone are not
> indicative of wilderness. Many national forests are sterile places,
> ecologically.
>
> http://www.mongabay.com/images/media/footprint.jpg
>
> That map shows how much land has been worked over by people in one way
> or another. Only northern Canada and Alaska still contain large,
> unbroken tracts of pristine land. The rest is mostly agriculture,
> grazing, tree-farms, cities and roads. It takes millions of acres to
> support people at a high standard of living. When someone says we only
> use 2% or 3% of the land, they're ignoring everything else needed to
> sustain dense cities.
>
> Those dark-green patches in the lower-48 contain trees that have never
> been cut, or roadless areas. Notice how small they are relative to
> industrialized or tamed parcels (lighter green, orange and red). It's
> an insult to demand more roads in those last pristine fragments. We
> need fewer people wanting a piece of the action, which means more birth
> control everywhere. That's the real solution if one has any respect for
> the land.
>
> Here's a "footprint" map of the entire world. Notice how densely packed
> Europe is. That same blight is creeping across America and it doesn't
> need help from the off-road lobby.
>
> http://www.mongabay.com/images/external/2005/2005-11-30_wcs.jpg
>
> R. Lander
>
Pretty pictures you've got there but pretty much useless without the
legend of what the colors actually mean.
Looking at you pretty coloring book would have us believe that almost
the entire eastern US is literally covered in people. Your world map is
no different. What do the color graduations signify?
Let's take India for example, you CAN pick it out without resorting to a
world atlas can't you? Based on colors alone one might believe that
India is absolutely covered in humanity, and population numbers might
lead you to think the same thing. After all, their population is right
on a par with China at around 2 billion souls, give or take a few
hundred million. The thing is, I've BEEN to India and I've seen a fair
portion of it, and while the cities themselves can be absolutely
crawling with people, the biggest hunk of the country is pretty much
free of significant numbers of them.
The US is approximately 3.5 million square miles with a population of
approximately 75 million people which works out to about 78 people per
square mile. A fair number of those are actually concentrated in the
major cities so that makes their density greater, but the density of the
rest of the country less. I'm betting a fairly substantial portion of
the city folk never get any closer to nature than the zoo and local
water park, so their impact on the environment is minimal, not counting
the emissions from their mini-vans.
Their indirect impact based on resources used in their behalf and
what-not might be a bit harder to judge, but unless you're willing to be
the first in line to be euthanized to minimize the impact to poor mother
earth I'd suggest you shut up about population issues.
There are about 4 million miles of roads in the US. For the sake of
argument lets say 1 mile of road for every square mile of real estate in
the country. If you laid them all end to end and side by side...well,
you should get the picture. A road isn't all that wide compared to a
mile of real estate is it? I'd guess the real estate is about, ohhh,
5,200 feet and change wider. IOW the overall impact of a road, on the
land, is pretty negligible.
And besides which, what is your point? Do you seriously think there is
anything, short of total global sterilization, that man can do to this
planet that is going to make any kind of lasting impact? Man, and
whatever impact we might have is going to be less than blip on the radar
that is the life cycle of this planet.